Students Study Native Americans Through Interdisciplinary Focus

Although the students in Anthropology 199a: "Nation Building I," are in the business of learning how to be tribal leaders and how to lead Native American communities into the 21st century, the class itself is a tribe without a chief.

The course, offered for the first time this year, came out of the Interfaculty Initiatives program as an unprecedented collaboration of a smorgasbord of departments and graduate schools.

Although the three main lecturers hail from the Law School, the Kennedy School of Government and the Anthropology Department, guest speakers range from Literature chair Barbara Johnson to local Native American leaders.

The problem of the future of Native Americans deserves such a far-flung approach, according to Nation Building lecturer William F. Nash, Bowditch professor of Central American and Mexican ethnology.

Fash was part of group of "concerned citizens," many from the Harvard Native American Program, who lobbied for and formed this interdisciplinary class devoted to Native Americans in the next century.

"We realized last year that approaches from different angles would be best to come up with solutions," Fash says.

Head TF Darren Ranco, a member of the Penobscot tribe and a fourth-year graduate student in social anthropology, says that the topic of the class can only be taught with an interdisciplinary approach.

"When you're thinking about the problems Native American tribes face, there is not just sort of one approach you can take," he says. "It demands a multiplicity of approaches."

The course attracted 17 graduate students and 29 undergraduates, about 25 percent of whom are of Native American descent.

Some, like Amanda S. Proctor '97-'98, say they have very practical reasons for taking the class.

"I come from the second-poorest reservation in the country," Proctor says. "There is no work, and you have to travel 15 miles to buy a coke. This is my reality. I want to know how to get the highway widened, how to get quality doctors and how to attract the business community. The problems are so multi-faceted."

The result of this student, faculty and administrative interest is an unprecedented "whirlwind tour" through the background of Native American societies and the approaches to solve the problems they will face in the future, according to Fash.

The three main professors deal specifically with government, law and anthropology, but guest speakers often tackle other approaches.

A routine class often includes several professors, TFs, guest speakers, and students scurrying up to the podium in Emerson 108 to share their knowledge on whatever topic has come up. Informal discussion is common, and rarely does everyone stick to one discipline on a given day.

The students first examine the major issues Native American societies must deal with and then read case studies to help formulate solutions for the future.

In keeping with the service-oriented purpose of the interfaculty initiatives, the second-semester continuation of the class sends the students into the field to work with Native American communities and produce a research paper.

Among the destinations: the Native American Indian Center of Boston, the Wampanoag tribe on Gay Head and other communities in New England and in the West.

Regardless of whether the interdisciplinary approach "Nation Building I" takes will become a viable model for other classes, students and faculty involved with the course say they enjoyed working with the new style.

"It's exciting. You don't just have one individual aspect, but different people's views on different aspects," Fash says. "I've learned a lot myself."

He says the unified goal of the course--to solve the problems of Native Americans--makes the overall structure coherent, although a bit "daunting."

"There is also cohesiveness in cultural unity," he says.

Ranco agrees. "I think it works. It's gelling."

He adds that the professors do not just "give their two cents" on their own narrow field, "but try to reflect on other fields as well. It's an exploration for them."

The students generally praise the interdisciplinary approach.

"This class takes a topic like casinos [on reservations] and analyzes it through many lenses, giving students a remarkable vantage point," Proctor says.

However, Proctor says she thinks the syllabus strays too far from the topic of nation building and too much into anthropology and history.